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Sweets for Spring and Summer featuring Dried Fruit

While dried fruit is a perfectly and naturally sweet treat all on its own, this post is all about the really decadent sweet stuff! Traina® Home Grown offers some ways to add dried fruit into classic sweets.

Cinnamon Rolls — A delightfully decadent way to start off the day, cinnamon rolls just aren’t the same without a generous helping of chewy dark or golden raisins. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing… For a twist on this traditional sweet morning meal, swap out raisins for Traina® Home Grown fruitons in either the All American Blend, featuring bits of sun dried peaches, dried apples, whole sweetened dried cranberries, golden raisins and dried blueberries, or the fruitons Summer Blend, with peaches, plums and nectarines. To really dial up the decadence, throw in a few chocolate chips, too!

Sour Cream Blueberry Lemon Cake — When combined, lemons and blueberries, which are both a little tart, marry to make some serious sweets. From pound cakes and muffins to a decadent sour cream blueberry lemon cake, these flavors practically scream spring. For a super-moist cake, sour cream is the secret ingredient that not only gives the cake its dense yet spongy texture, it’s also very complementary to the tart flavors of the lemon and blueberries.

Fruit and Nut Bread — Take bread from savory to sweet with the addition of some dried fruits and or chopped nuts. Bread recipes are typically very forgiving in this sense, so feel free to customize add ins in any combination!

Chocolate Chip Dried Cherry Cookies — Cherries and chocolate are a match made in indulgence! Dried cherries are a great substitute for fresh in a multitude of recipes as they are pre-pitted! For cookies, no reconstitution is necessary. However, for other cherry desserts that require a juicier result, soak cherries in water, juice or even a favorite liquor or liqueur.

Apple Pie Bars — Could anything be more American than apple pie? Not much, but making one from scratch can equate to a lot of time in the kitchen. For a shortcut, try apple pie bars using reconstituted apple slices and some sweetened applesauce to make a sweet yet natural filling.

Berry Cherry Cheesecake — Rich and creamy cheesecake can be “lightened up” with some dried fruit topping or drizzled with a dried fruit sauce (apricot perhaps for a spring-y/summery version!) made by boiling dried fruit with ingredients such as apple cider vinegar, water, honey, brown sugar, and even schnapps (optional).

This spring and summer, dive into some decadence — and a bite of nutrition — with delicious desserts made with dried fruit. With the large variety of options available from Traina Home Grown, the options are limitless.